Want to stay up on the tech scene in Asia but only have a few minutes? We’ve got you covered
We know you’re busy, and it can be hard to keep track of all of the news that battles for our limited attention. We have aggregated the top news today — both e27 and from elsewhere — and included a short summary of the news.
MAS Fintech Festival
The big event in Singapore kicked off this week with the flagship conference starting today with a major announcement from the city’s Central Bank.
The MAS will launch a S$27 million (US$20 million) Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics Grant. It is also doubling-down on the distributed ledger, promote the development of APIs, launch new KYC guidelines and create supervisory technology for data analytics.
Singapore Fintech Fest launches with more than 25,000 participants from over 100 countries [Business Times]
Event coverage from Singapore’s mainstream media. Statistics being thrown around include 25,000 participants from 100 countries.
MAS Announcements [MAS]
The Monetary Authority of Singapore made three separate announcements today. We aggregated them in our article above, but if you want to do a deep-dive, the link above will help.
Funding news
Singapore startup Hmlet raises US$1.5M to grow “co-living spaces” in Singapore and Japan [e27]
Hmlet helps targets young working professionals by helping them find flexible rental options. The idea is that because a lot of young professionals move around a lot, locking them into one or two-year leases can be problematic. So, the minimum lease signing is three-months, but there is an emergency out-clause should that become necessary.
Indonesia’s Mobilkamu raises undisclosed seed funding from East Ventures [e27]
Mobilkamu is an online platform for car buyers. It helps people navigate through a variety of discounts and see availability of certain makes and models.
Singapore fintech startup Active.ai raises US$8.25M to help banks adopt AI solutions [e27]
Active.ai is a startups that builds full-stack AI solutions for financial institutions. The product offers machine learning, natural language processing and natural language generation tech that can be incorporated into messaging, voice and IoT devices.
Movements of the big boys
Qualcomm Rejects Broadcom’s Takeover Bid [Wall Street Journal]
After announcing a move from Singapore to the US, Broadcom made a huge splace when it made a US$105 billion acquisition offer for Qualcomm. If the deal had gone through, Broadcom would have become one of the most important chipmakers in the world.
Reports emerged today that Qualcomm wasn’t happy with the deal and said it ‘significantly undervalues’ the company.
Ant Financial signs MOU to help Chinese tourists in Vietnam stay cashless [Press Release]
The National Payment Corporation of Vietnam and Ant Financial have inked an agreement to help proliferate the Alipay system across Vietnam. The deal targets Chinese tourists in the country and will help them go cashless during their travels.
Uber’s South Asia policy chief quits in latest senior departure [Reuters]
Shweta Rajpal Kohli, Uber’s Chief of Policy for India and South Asia has left the company. She was leading the effort to engage with the government, and one source told Reuters it will be a difficult role to fill.
Amazon is reportedly prepping a free version of Prime Video to battle Netflix [The Next Web]
Amazon is famous for entering a market and immediately slashing prices to elbow out the competition. That being said, free is an extreme price slash even for Bezos. It will work like a freemium app whereby one tier of videos is free but if someone wants the full service they will need to pay.
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